A collaborative project between the University for the Creative Arts & the University of Kent

Friday, 28 October 2011

Specific Immune System

T-Cell, B-Cell and Phagocyte fighting bacteria. Renders without post, except the first one which has blur and fog.

The shaders are very reactive to lighting conditions, so sometimes they appear darker and sometimes brighter.

As said before, while trying to make everything seem scientific there had to be at least a bit of personality in the models. The T-Cell is the most aggressive and determined of the group, it's responsible for double checking on infections, raising the alarm (releasing cytokines) and it also has the ability to attack and kill cancer cells.

The second image shows the b-cell which I wanted to show as a large battle-ship type of cell, able to identify pathogens and release proteins that can bind them together. However, since it has to wait for the T-Cell to double-confirm its job it needed to look at bit more developed than the others. The dark nucleus type of inner life came out well to show its more complex role I think. In this shot they have just appeared on the horizon, and now they're approaching the bacteria.

The last image is a bit hard to identify without the post work done. It shows our phagocyte attacking bacteria. Phagocytes are less picky about their enemies and they basically engulf everything that appears foreign to them. We wanted to represent their "naivety" with a marshmallow type of shape. A bit like the silliest kind of ghost from ghost busters. The way it moves also reflects this. Also, it doesn't really have much going for inner life in our depiction. I think its simple "eat and digest" task is represented alright like this.